Wilshere's Luton bow ends in loss and jeers

Cheered out but booed off, Jack Wilshere got the full managerial experience as the Hatters lost 2-0 to Mansfield

- Paul MacInnes

Getting booed off after your first match, and booed off with a fair degree of vituperation, was not how Jack Wilshere intended his managerial career to begin. But that was what he endured as he led his players off the Kenilworth Road pitch past a seething Luton fanbase, who two years ago were loving life in the Premier League.

A 2-0 defeat by Nigel Clough's Mansfield was no disgrace, a finely balanced contest decided by the chances Luton failed to take and those that Mansfield did. It was a loss that left the hosts 14th in League One, eight points off the playoff spots, but Clough was positive about Luton's prospects of turning things around under Wilshere, and surely that is correct.

It would be wrong, though, not to note that there was an eerie note of fatalism in the ground, even as an apparent new era was only just getting under way.

Wilshere said the end of the match would not tarnish his memory of the beginning, when the former Arsenal star was serenaded on to the pitch with chants of "Super Jack" and the crowd were on their feet applauding. "It was probably one of the best moments of my career," he said. "I felt the love, I heard the noise." He also put the result down to technical errors, albeit mistakes that allowed a longstanding lack of confidence among his players to come to the surface.